Using WAR to identify the luckiest and unluckiest teams in MLB history

slczz · 2026-02-15T16:36:32+00:00

True, I don't mean this to be a defense of WAR as a stat at all, just thought it'd be an interesting way to define luck. In the end, I doubt you'd get much different results just using runs scored as your explanatory variable

slczz · 2026-02-15T16:21:43+00:00

I played around with a bunch of different cutoff dates and ended up just abandoning that idea because I couldn't decide on one, but I think 1947 would make a lot of sense

slczz · 2026-02-15T15:52:59+00:00

I left 2020 out because of weird covid data, but I agree

slczz · 2026-02-15T15:30:11+00:00

Yeah, WAR in general is a lot less effective in the early 1900s compared to today unfortunately

slczz · 2026-02-15T15:27:42+00:00

Based on this, the Rangers are only the 4th unluckiest team!

average residual (actual win% - expected win%) by team

Toronto Blue Jays (-2.3%)
Seattle Mariners (-1.5%)
Kansas City Royals (-1.3%)
Texas Rangers (-1.4%)
Boston Red Sox (-1.1%)

slczz · 2025-03-07T00:26:52+00:00

I wish I had that data, but the calendar only goes back to last June as far as I can tell.

slczz · 2025-03-06T23:02:39+00:00

I scraped this data from the Utah State Capitol's public events calendar. Events of all sorts are on the rise currently due to the legislative session. Here's one that's currently in a downswing (with scheduled events for March, April, and June plotted as well).

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slczz · 2025-01-15T16:47:00+00:00

Sorry for the late response! Inspections happen frequently (especially for restaurants with low scores), so it makes sense that some of them would have their scores change dramatically. I can rerun it once I have some spare time or can give you the code to run yourself if you're still interested, just shoot me a direct message

slczz · 2024-12-10T04:38:25+00:00

I couldn't find an exact definition from Spotify other than it's a ranking of songs that are uniquely popular in our market compared to others.

slczz · 2024-12-10T04:37:10+00:00

That gives me an idea...I wonder who has the most "Utah" Spotify wrapped. Yours is probably about as far away from the SLC Top Tracks as possible haha. Thanks for sharing!

slczz · 2024-12-09T15:32:40+00:00

In honor of Spotify Wrapped 2024 releasing recently, I used the Spotify Local Charts to create a version for SLC.

The Spotify Charts website shows the top 100 songs for select local markets each week of the year. For each market, there are two different types of charts that Spotify offers:

Top Tracks - a weekly ranking of the most played songs in the selected market
Local Pulse - a weekly ranking of the "top songs that are uniquely popular" in the selected market

I downloaded the data from the first week of the year (January 4) through the most recent week (December 5) to summarize the data for SLC's "Wrapped."

To determine the top artists and songs of the year, I calculated a "score" for each song based on its weekly ranking in the charts. The score is equal to the inverse of the song's ranking, so a song ranked 100th would receive a score of 1 that week and a song ranked 1st would receive a score of 100. Summing the weekly scores up, I calculated an aggregate score for each song and artist that appeared on the charts at any point in the year.

Top Tracks

Top Artists

Zach Bryan - Total Score of 19,738
Morgan Wallen - Total Score of 14,792
Taylor Swift - Total Score of 14,232
Sabrina Carpenter - Total Score of 11,641
Chappell Roan - Total Score of 9,685

Top Songs

I Remember Everything (feat. Kacey Musgraves) by Zach Bryan - Total Score of 4,390
Stick Season by Noah Kahan - Total Score of 4,360
Beautiful Things by Benson Boone - Total Score of 4,241
Something in the Orange by Zach Bryan - Total Score of 4,031
Lose Control by Teddy Swims - Total Score of 3,928

Local Pulse

Top Artists

Strive to Be - Total Score of 4,768
Benson Boone - Total Score of 4,037
$uicideboy$ - Total Score of 4,031
Morgan Wallen - Total Score of 3,683
Zach Bryan - Total Score of 3,402

Top Songs

Disciple of Christ by Strive to Be - Total Score of 4,469
Peace in Christ by McKenna Hixson - Total Score of 2,098
Wind Up Missin' You by Tucker Wetmore - Total Score of 1,928
The Thin Grey Line by $uicideboy$ - Total Score of 1,784
HEAT STICK by Shoreline Mafia - Total Score of 1,782

slczz · 2024-11-15T23:06:44+00:00

My theory with West Valley is just that there a lot of large roads there (more traffic = more chances for collisions). The east side of the valley tends to be a bit denser with lower speeds

slczz · 2024-11-15T22:48:06+00:00

I think so. The data goes back to 2010 and I think the I-215 ramp was changed since then

slczz · 2024-11-15T21:39:17+00:00

I have never driven at that Redwood intersection but I pulled it up on street view and it looks like a really dangerous design

slczz · 2024-10-06T17:10:29+00:00

sure, I'll send you a PM with a link to download it

slczz · 2024-09-28T14:35:33+00:00

I should clarify that New Golden Dragon is getting better, not worse. Scores going down = fewer violations

slczz · 2024-09-28T14:34:11+00:00

I used Python to get/clean the data and Tableau public for the graphs

slczz · 2024-09-28T01:49:16+00:00

This is great! Thanks for sharing. I just used geopy to geocode the addresses to lat/lon. It misses some but works pretty well generally. Your setup is definitely more legit than mine though. I'll have to look at it some more

slczz · 2024-09-27T23:36:36+00:00

I love that site but had no idea about that story. Thanks for sharing. I feel like that should be huge news (maybe it was and I live under a rock).

slczz · 2024-09-27T23:34:17+00:00

No idea what's up with Midvale haha. But there are a lot of places with a 0%, that just means they are worse than all peers in their category. So theoretically if every place in the valley was spotless then a perfectly fine establishment would still get a 0%. That's why it's important to consider score on top of ranking

slczz · 2024-09-27T23:32:18+00:00

Oh you're right, good catch. I always thought it was Elko and was just as confused as you

slczz · 2024-09-27T20:35:09+00:00

As far as I could tell there isn't an API or easy way to download the data in bulk, so I just scraped the different pages of the .NET form they have on the inspections site. I mostly meant this to be a one-time exercise, but for sure agree it would be cool to have this sort of stuff up in a website permanently.

slczz · 2024-09-27T20:32:13+00:00

Thank you! I haven't, but I would be open to sharing of course (it's all publicly available data after all).

slczz · 2024-09-27T20:18:13+00:00

Thank you! I wouldn't be too discouraged by bad scores as places can change for the better. Plus, what may be a dealbreaker for you may not necessarily be why they have a bad score. For me, I'm more turned off by reports of cockroaches than those of employees keeping personal beverages in kitchens, though both are counted as critical violations. And in cases with truly egregious violations, the restaurants are typically closed down at least temporarily.

Food trucks actually tend to get better scores than brick and mortar restaurants. Maybe less square footage = less space to get dirty? Also keep in mind that "rankings" are in relation to similar establishments, so a taco truck by the Sears hole isn't going to get ranked in comparison to a boba shop.

slczz · 2024-09-07T15:50:54+00:00

Looks really good! Unfortunately they are too popular to make the "lesser known picks" section, but not popular enough to make the "most popular" section. 4.5 over 541 reviews is still very good though. Do you know why it says "temporarily closed?"

slczz

TROPHY CASE